Björk Explains Television (As Only Björk Could)

“So all that’s on TV, it just goes directly into your brain and you stop judging it’s right or not. You just swallow and swallow. This is what an Icelandic poet told me. And I became so scared to television that I always got headaches when I watched it. Then, later on, when I got my Danish book on television, I stopped being afraid because I read the truth, the scientifical truth and it was much better.”

How The Venerable Oxford English Dictionary Is Changing

“Behind the updating and revising of the OED is another, much bigger story: the inexorable growth of English itself. At a conservative estimate, 1bn people now speak it as a second or foreign language, while the 375m for whom it is a mother tongue continue to mould their own varieties in ways that the dictionary’s original compilers could never have imagined. As such, the OED finds itself in the curious position of being a national institution called upon, almost by default, to assume the role of a global one.”

“Fixing” Tate Britain

“A rambling pile of high Victoriana, with a cartoonish PoMo extension and other well-meaning insertions, Tate Britain has long suffered from an identity complex, standing as a confused muddle of bits. Successive architects have each brought their add-ons, but few have spared much consideration for the whole – until now.”

Should Charitable Foundations Throw Money At Detroit To Save DIA Art?

“The federal mediator in the Detroit bankruptcy is asking a group of at least eight local and national foundations to consider collectively contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to solve two of the most contentious issues in the case: municipal pensions on the chopping block and Detroit Institute of Arts paintings on the auction block.”